Harding finished her call and scurried back to me. She nodded, and I sighed. It was time to see what damage had been done. We started across the road, and a paramedic rushed to confront us. We showed our badges, and she nodded after only a cursory look. Her dark-green uniform was dashed with blood, and I wondered who it belonged to.
“I was on the phone to one of the police officers,” I explained. “Are they okay?”
The paramedic scratched her neck as she debated what to say.
“One of them will be fine,” she finally replied.
“And the other?” I asked quietly.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said softly and shook her head.
Harding moaned beside me, and I felt the world lurch a little. Which of the officers had died?
“There was a passenger, too, an older man, how is he?” I asked and forced my voice to be steady.
“He’s already on route to the hospital,” she replied. “He’s alive for now.”
I wanted more details from the woman, about the passengers in the car and whatever she could remember about the scene when they first arrived, but then someone called for her, and the paramedic was gone.
“This is unbelievable,” Harding moaned beside me. “It feels like a dream.”
We looked again at the smashed-up cop car, dented like a coke can. When I was a kid, I always saw police cars, and the people inside, as invincible. I could never have pictured that scene before me.
“More like a nightmare,” I murmured back.
The air around the car stank of burnt chemicals and charred rubber, and there was a slight whiff of sulphur. Dirt churned up by all the speeding vehicles still floated in the air, and I could taste it at the back of my throat.
“What should we do?” Harding asked as she studied the scene.
“The local force will be already on their way,” I said. “They’ll presume that they’re the first on the scene. Once they have the names of our officers, they’ll contact us.”
I felt the weighty presence of my phone in my pocket, heavy as a brick. I should call Clarke, I thought. She would find out soon enough, and it’d be better news from me. I patted the pocket, but I left the phone inside. There would be time to call her in a bit, once we’d checked on the condition of our officers.
“We should check,” I said. “Clarke will expect me to know when I call.”
Harding nodded, and we walked around the back of one of the ambulances. PC Murray was laid out on the stretcher, a dozen wires snaking around his body. A paramedic was sitting at his head, writing down the numbers which beeped on a screen.
When Murray realised we were there, he tried to sit up, but he struggled. The paramedic leapt from his seat and restrained the cop.
“Stay where you are, lad,” I warned. “Are you okay?”
Murray removed his oxygen mask and swatted away the paramedic’s hand.
“I’ll live,” he said and then closed his eyes for a moment. “Webster died straight away. I saw it with my own eyes. He hadn’t had time to put on a seat belt yet.”
I swallowed the large lump stuck in my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said and wished those two words could appropriately convey all of my regret.
I looked at Harding, who appeared to be frozen. The colour had emptied from her face, she was as pale as a ghost, and her skin was almost as translucent.
“And what about Madden?” I asked the PC.
He inhaled another gasp of oxygen before answering.
“He looks worse than me, but he’ll pull through.”
“Thank you for--,” Harding began to say. I heard the wobble in her voice.
“Just concentrate on recovering,” I cut in as I thought the last thing Murray needed was tears. “You’ve done a great job, and we’ll take it from here.”
“Sir?” Murray called out, his voice thin and wispy. “Can you come here for a moment?”
I shot a glance at Harding who had, mercifully, appeared to pull herself together, and I stepped into the ambulance.
“Here,” Murray said as he opened his fist. There was something in his hand. “The long lens photos. I took them from Webster’s pocket.”
I shook my head at the cop’s resilience, and Murray’s face hardened.
“Webster was already dead, so he didn’t notice,” he said and then looked up at me steadily, as though I might punish him.
“You did really well,” I said softly as I smiled down at him.
“We need to go now,” the paramedic told me, frantically gesturing that I leave.
I hopped out from the ambulance, and the paramedic slammed the doors shut. I heard a loud bang, then the vehicle sped away.
“What did he give you?” Harding asked.
I unfurled the photos. The edges were slick with blood, and I saw Harding wince as she took in the splash of red. I forced myself to ignore it and to look at the images. The first one showed Kennedy leaving work with another man, while the second showed Kennedy and his friend meeting someone else outside a pub.
“Do you recognise them?” I asked and held the photos closer to her face.
“Possibly,” the brunette replied. “But they weren’t his main Facebook friends.”
Wind whipped through the gardens and blew tiny pieces of gravel into my face. It hurt, but not as much as when I stared into the back of the second ambulance and saw the body bag. I took a step back, wanting to create as much distance between us as possible. I felt my skin quickly cover in sweat, and I willed my thumping heart to slow down.
My eyes picked apart the scene inside the ambulance in no particular order. I saw the red leather seat, the box of sterile tools which hadn’t been touched, and the thick plastic body bag, black as a bin liner, which zipped up around PC Webster. I felt the photographs grow hot in my hand.
I sighed mournfully and felt the sadness right in my toes. There would be many funerals when all this was over.
I felt my partner slacken beside me, and the shift of her body as she sat down on the kerb.
“Sir?” Harding asked, her voice shaky again. “Is this our fault?”
I crouched in front of her. The Brit’s body wobbled with potential tears, like a dam about to burst its banks. I reached out and wrapped my hands around her thin wrists, but she only pulled away. A cold breeze swept up the street, then, and I saw her shiver. I pulled off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and she snuggled down into it while she stared at the wrecked car.
“I mean, because we organised the protection, and now…” she nodded feebly to PC Webster’s body.
“This wasn’t us,” I protested in defiance. “This was because of one person only. And we’re going to catch him.”
She sniffed once, and I forced her eyes to catch mine. In them, I hoped she saw the determination I felt.
“I need you to pull it together, Harding,” I said, and I used my kind voice, firm, but gentle. “We’re a team. If we fall to pieces on each other, we’re finished.”
“You’re right,” she said, and the thin line of her mouth almost stretched into a smile.
“There’s no crying in CID,” I reminded her. “Whatever we find, and whatever we feel, it’s nowhere near what the victim feels. And they don’t care if you feel bad for them.”
The Brit got up from the kerb and took a breath. She appeared to be steady again, but she kept my jacket wrapped around her shoulders.
Other police cars had pulled up to the scene, and I watched the officers take in the destruction. I didn’t recognise any of them, though the local station was Holyrod, not one I was familiar with. A detective, appropriately clad in all black clothing, caught my glance, and his eyes narrowed. I wondered if he knew who I was, and I decided I didn’t want to find out. I started to move away from the scene as he directed officers to set up a proper cordon, but only chose to tape off half the road. A rookie mistake. You had to think big with a cordon, it can always be shrunk down later.
“Come on,” I pressed
. “We should get out of here before someone asks questions. And we need to get to Madden before anyone else does.”
Harding had been inching along beside me, and she’d spotted the detective as well. We slipped around the remaining ambulance and scurried along the sidewalk until we were clear of the scene and back at my car. I unlocked the doors quickly, and we slipped inside before anyone thought to ask who we were. When I looked up, I noticed that the detective was still looking at us, and a sign-in-sign-out sheet was being passed around. I was glad we’d missed it. Nobody had to know we were there.
I turned the key and the radio blared out Bat out of Hell at full volume. Even with the windows up, several people turned to look, and I snapped it off immediately. I turned the car around and drove away before anyone could approach the car and ask what we were doing there.
“It’s going to be tricky when they pull up Webster’s call history,” I sighed. “Clarke will have to explain how she didn’t know about this, and we’ll have to explain just what it is we’re investigating.”
My partner didn’t say anything, and I glanced over at her. She frowned as she stared out the window, a sign that she was trying to work something through.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“Why wasn’t Madden killed?” she asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, why didn’t he finish the job?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “And it seems an especially reckless method for this type of killer.”
“Is there any chance it’s a coincidence?” she asked.
“Two murderers?” I laughed bleaky. “I hope not. Could Webster have been the target?”
My partner paled and turned to look at me.
“What if he was the planned third victim, and we sent him out into the streets?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but something about this scene feels off,” I said. “It doesn’t follow the pattern. We need a witness statement.”
“I suppose there’s only one way to get one,” Harding said and smiled grimly.
“Let’s hope he survives long enough to tell us,” I said.
We started the journey to the Royal Infirmary. My fingers twitched on the siren switch, but I couldn’t justify the reason. We travelled in an unofficial capacity now. Nobody knew what we were up to.
I whizzed around the edges of the parks. There were so many parks, and golf courses, too, with their acres of hard, plastic grass, created so men didn’t need to step foot into real nature, and I never hated them as much as I did right then.
We made it around all the ‘green spaces’ and arrived to find that the main car park in the hospital was full. I checked my watch and realized we’d arrived just in time for the visiting hour. We circled the grounds slowly, and I was about to cave and use my police badge when Harding spotted a steel-grey Smart Car exiting a space.
“But it’s a bit of a squeeze, sir,” she warned.
I rolled my eyes and slipped smoothly into the space.
“Okay, I get it,” the brunette snickered. “You’re a great driver.”
We hurried towards the white doors of the entrance. A middle-aged woman hovered just outside the doors, dressed in a hospital gown and a pair of those socks they provided. She clutched an IV bag in her left hand and a cigarette in her right hand. Our eyes locked, and she took a long, hard drag before she smiled at me. She was missing nearly all of her teeth, and I felt myself shudder.
There was an information booth just inside the entrance. Normally, we could radio in and find out where our witnesses had been taken, but today we needed to fly below the radar for as long as we could. We approached the round woman behind the counter and produced our badges. She cast a bored look over our official ID’s and then looked at us with an even more bored expression.
“What do you need?” she asked lazily.
“We need to find two men who’ve just been brought in following a motor vehicle accident,” I replied quickly as I glanced over my shoulder for any sign of another police car.
“Names?” she asked as her hands hovered over the keyboard.
“Rory Madden and a PC Murray,” I said.
“Do you know the first name?” she asked and wrinkled a caterpillar-like eyebrow.
“Erm…” I said and looked at my partner.
“No,” Harding admitted in a quiet voice.
“Well,” the woman said behind the curved glass. “There's one Rory Madden in Major Trauma. Perhaps your other friend is there, too.”
“Major Trauma?” I asked.
“Down the corridor, left at WH Smith, and straight on,” she said. “You won’t miss it.”
“Right,” I replied, but the woman had already gone back to her own little world.
Harding and I set off in search of Major Trauma. The hospital corridors were like a rabbit warren. One wrong move, and we’d be completely lost, and we’d miss our chance to talk to Madden. There were no official signs for the Trauma centre, and I remembered reading that it had only recently been completed.
We found the WH Smith, which featured a large magazine rack out front, and turned towards the left. Eventually, we reached a set of double doors with a makeshift sign stating it was the Major Trauma Centre. I tugged on the doors and discovered they were locked.
“Now what?” my partner asked. “Do we have to walk all the way back and ask for a different route?”
Then the doors swung open, and a young male porter emerged with a gurney. An old man was laid out on the bed with his eyes closed and a thick blanket tucked tightly around him. The porter nodded to us, and we slipped through the doors.
The centre was busy, and staff moved between the rooms in a well-choreographed routine. Doctors in scrubs and lab coats darted through the chaos, while a pharmacy tech stopped at each room with the current prescriptions.
“I don’t see anyone we can ask,” I said as I took in the scurrying forms.
“We should just peek around the doors,” Harding suggested. “Until we find either Madden or Murray.”
I nodded, and we started along on the right side of the hallway. Halfway down, we found the injured officer. I was happy to see that PC Murray was in a private room, though surprised that there wasn’t another police officer on duty yet. A small whiteboard by his door which read ‘nil by mouth’ and then listed the consultant’s name. I made a note of the latter and then started to open the door wider.
A pink-scrubbed nurse appeared out of nowhere. She placed a warning hand on the door frame and stared daggers at me and Harding.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
I hesitated. I wondered if our presence would be recorded. But by the chaotic state of the ward, I guessed not.
“Detectives,” I said as we showed our badges again.
“You can’t go in,” the Indian nurse replied firmly as she folded her arms. “He needs rest.”
“It’s very urgent that we interview him today, while his memory is fresh,” I persisted.
“Not as urgent as this man’s need to recover,” the nurse snapped.
I sighed. This was going to be more difficult than I thought. I hadn’t wanted to bother PC Murray, either, but what else could we do? We hadn’t found Madden yet, and Webster was dead. There were no other eyewitnesses.
“Ma’am,” Harding said politely. “I appreciate you’re just doing your job, but so are we. We’re detectives from--”
“I don’t care if you’re MI6,” the nurse cut in. “He needs rest.”
I caught the nurse’s eye and pleaded silently with her.
“Please,” I explained. “We just need five minutes. This officer saw his partner murdered, and another man severely injured. The sooner we talk to him, the sooner we can track down the person responsible for putting him here.”
The nurse tilted her face to the ceiling wearily.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Three minutes. And not a second more.”
“Thank you,” I said in a quiet voice.
“I mean
it,” the dark-haired woman warned as she tapped at her watch. “I’m timing you.”
We slipped past the nurse and stepped into the very white room. In the afternoon sun, it was nearly blinding, and I wondered why no one had bothered to close the curtains. Murray himself looked ghostly white, and he had already been hooked up to an IV and one of those wretched monitors that bleep all the time.
On Murray’s bedside table was a plastic cup of water with a straw stuck in it, and a shiny apple cut into half-moon segments which had browned slightly in the middle. He must have been given those before being declared as nil by mouth, when the doctors were unsure if he’d need surgery still, and I wondered why the food and drink hadn’t been removed. But then Murray looked so still, I didn’t think he could handle the apple or the cup on his own.
I thought Murray was asleep, and I was about to suggest that we continue our search for Madden, but Murray’s eyes flickered, and he gave us a weak smile when he saw us standing at the foot of his bed.
“How are you feeling?” Harding asked him in a gentle tone as she walked over to the side of the bed.
“Not bad, now that I’m on happy pills,” Murray half joked.
“Can you tell us what happened?” she asked.
The cop scratched the cannula in the back of his hand, and then he closed his eyes again.
“It’s a bit blurry,” he admitted.
“That’s okay,” Harding assured him.
“I was in the driver’s seat, Madden in the back,” he said. “Mark was next to me.”
I watched as my partner looked down at her feet. Mark. We hadn’t known PC Webster’s first name.
“I hadn’t even turned on the ignition, yet,” Murray said and then closed his eyes tighter. “Or, maybe I had. I’m not sure. And a car rammed into us, completely out of nowhere.”
“From the rear?” I guessed.
“Must have been,” the PC conceded. “But it was Webster’s side which took the impact.”
I tried to imagine how exactly the car had been parked. What he’d described didn’t make sense to me. They must have at least started to drive when the car hit.
“Murray, did the driver remain in the car?” I asked. “Did you notice anything about them?”
Blue Vengenance: A Logan Thorne DCI Scottish Detective Thriller Page 19